Filtering by Tag: joy

Despite some delays in writing a follow up on play, the concepts are still percolating in my mind! I just finished my final concert with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra (25 performances this summer, including two operas...phew!), and am teaching a daily yoga class all week, but am slowly making a transition back to normal life (with a little less orchestra), writing, and of course moving to Seattle! Let's just revisit some of the concepts behind the Art of Play, part 1.

-Play is a valuable opportunity to learn and practice new skills for both children and adults

-Play can take many forms, from unstructured play for children to opportunities for adults to play games, create, craft or build, and interact with others.

How can we infuse this knowledge into teaching? As a musician and movement educator, I've seen the huge range of music games for children, but as musicians age, creativity, improvisation, and problem solving often decline in the educational system. In movement, children's recess and physical activities are often play oriented, from jungle gym time to tag to more traditional games like kickball. Somehow, adult fitness became very rigid, structured, and is often indoors.

Adult fitness is often:

1) Highly Structured with repetitions, durations, and sets. This can also include traditional sports with strict rules

2) Motivated by aesthetic appearances and aesthetic goals, which can take away from the actual experience of moving.

3) Antisocial, i.e. working out alone at a gym with headphones in, or walking on a treadmill watching tv or reading a magazine

4) Serious Work, i.e. another thing to schedule and complete within a given day.

This particular model doesn't work people for so many people, but the flip side is that many people are instead drawn to group fitness because it is fun, often accompanied with music, led by enthusiastic teachers, and community building. Yet with group fitness, the level of training is often minimal (*a crossfit level 1 training is a weekend, true of many other fitness formats), the classes may be too large to give individualized attention, and the group dynamic can push people to attempt movements that may be way beyond their skills and bodily abilities.

What can we do about this as teachers and trainers?

1) Be knowledgeable, seek continuing education, and learn as much as you can.

2) But...with that knowledge, seek to create a fun, open, and accepting environment for all people. Is your marketing exclusively oriented around thin, young, white people?

Does your gym have weight loss supplements as promotional?

Do your coaches fat shame new clients with weight loss expectations and weigh ins, even if the client didn't come in for that?

If clients or students don't do quite what you're cuing them to, do you panic, shame them, or get angry?

Does your facility welcome trans and queer individuals, and have spaces for them to change?

Do you have diverse teachers in terms of age, sexuality, gender, and race?

3) Give clients a chance to do something fun. Allow clients to self reflect on what they like and dislike doing in a yoga, pilates, fitness class. I love giving clients 3-5 minutes to do their favorite exercise or warm-up, even if it wasn't part of my plan, provided it is safe for their body. I had a woman in her early 60's who loved doing pilates jump board work, and even if we were working on other things, that permission to move freely and jump brought her child like joy.

4) Look for ways to instill play and joy into the formats you already teach- goofy names, humor, new ways of looking at traditional exercises, are all great things. I love Trina Altman's fun videos and even better titles, and Nikki Naab-Levy's approach to traditional pilates exercises.

5) Give yourself permission to play, regardless of whatever fitness format or modality you teach and practice. Try new things (safely), try new classes, and be willing to be bad at something. That may mean taking a dance class, a trampoline class, or just trying new ways to move within the yoga and fitness space something. I love playing with yoga props in new ways, crawling, creating obstacle courses, playing on the monkey bars, and other ways of challenging the traditional fitness model.

6) Be a beginner again at something. When we are first learning a skill, theres so much to be gained by failing, laughing, and then trying again. I took tap dancing last year and loved it- was I great? No, but it was a way of playing and trying new things. Not taking things too seriously is an important part of learning, especially a new skill.

Above all, if you're a fitness professional, remembering that you can be highly knowledgeable and have fun at the same time. Many of the people who come to pilates and yoga (or any format) may be nervous or dislike fitness, they may be insecure in their body and their abilities, and may have had previously negative experiences with coaches and trainers. Making the space welcoming to all bodies and a place for joyful embodiment not only supports the industry, but builds a relationship with clients that's invaluable.

A few weeks ago, I attended a thought provoking talk at Chautauqua by psychologist Dr. Peter Gray on the art of play, and the importance of play for children. Although the talk was oriented at restoring unstructured play for developing children, I was compelled by the possibilities for adults in movement, as well as integrating play into music lessons and education. Let's take a look at how he defines play first.

Play, as I define it and as many other play theorists tend to define it, is, first and foremost, self-chosen and self-directed. Players choose freely whether or not to play, make and change the rules as they go along, and are always free to quit. Second, play is intrinsically motivated; that is, it is done for its own sake, not for external rewards such as trophies, improved résumés, or praise from parents or other adults. Third, play is guided by mental rules (which provide structure to the activity), but the rules always leave room for creativity. Fourth, play is imaginative; that is, it is seen by the players as in some sense not real, separate from the serious world. And last, play is conducted in an alert, active, but relatively unstressed frame of mind.

There are a few points here that really stand out to me- that play is self initiated by the individual, lacks extrinsic motivation or reward, and is imaginative in some way. How often do adults do anything that is intrinsically motivated? And how often do we create imagination driven contexts as adults? In most cases, not very often, especially not within our traditional work and relationship models.

Dr Gray's primary points are that children (and all mammals) learn valuable life skills through play- social emotional, developmental, coordination, mimicry of adult tasks, courage, and more. As our modern society becomes more focused on achievement based results and school testing, our children have less time outside, period, as well as less time to actually play. He also goes on to explain how children are put in highly structured, adult driven learning environments from an early age. For a six year old, she may have a little bit of homework at night, some sort of sports practice on some afternoons, a different sports practice on other days, and then art, music, or another sort of class. His time to be free and unstructured is relatively minimal, as well as his time to play with other kids in an unstructured way (because they are equally busy).

In terms of research, there has been a significant increase in depression in young people from the 1950's to now. "As based on unchanged measures and criteria, today children and teenagers are five to eight times more likely to be depressed or anxious to a clinically significant degree than they were in the 1950s, and roughly four times more likely to commit suicide."- Peter Gray, the Journal of Play

This statistic alone is alarming, and in his talk, he presented other statistics that also correlated with the lack of movement (sedentarism) and the increasing pressure on young children to perform at a high academic level, i.e. if you don't do well on this test, then...

Fostering dogs has been one way for me to explore play with baby mammals- here’s my adopted 7 month puppy, Milo, attempting to chase a ball.

What then interests me is how can take this research about play, and then apply it to the populations that we work with. I primarily do not teach young children, although I have many colleagues who do, and although I've taken kids yoga training courses, I haven't taught a kids yoga class in years. I do however, work with many high powered, intense, adults, who have long forgotten the possibility of play in their own lives and bodies. How can we bring this work to the people we work with, and how can it enrich their lives? More in part 2 and 3!